1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
2“Two women were there,
daughters of one mother.
3And they played the whore in Egypt, in their youth,
they played the whore there.
and there were their virgin teats fondled.
4And their names were Oholah, the elder, and Oholibah, her sister. And they became Mine and bore sons and daughters, and their names were Samaria, Oholah, and Jerusalem, Oholibah. 5And Oholah played the whore while she was Mine, and she was hot for her lovers, the warriors of Assyria, 6clothed in indigo, satraps and governors, all of them lovely young men, horsemen riding steeds. 7And she gave her whoring to them, the pick of Assyria all of them, and in everything she was hot for, in all their foul things, she was defiled. 8And her whoring from Egypt she did not abandon, for they had lain with her in her youth, and they fondled her virgin teats and spilled their whoring upon her. 9Therefore did I give her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians for whom she was hot. 10They laid bare her nakedness. Her sons and her daughters they took, and her they slew with the sword. And she became a byword for women, and they exacted punishment upon her. 11And her sister Oholibah saw, and she made her hot lust more ruinous than hers and her whoring more than her sister’s whoring. 12For the Assyrians she was hot, satraps and governors, warriors clothed to perfection, horsemen riding steeds, lovely young men all of them. 13And I saw that she was defiled—a single way for the two of them. 14And she went further with her whoring, and she saw men etched on the wall, images of Chaldeans etched with vermillion, 15girded with belts around their waists, wrapped turbans on their heads, the look of captains all of them had, the image of the sons of Babylonia, Chaldeans, the land of their birth. 16And she was hot for them, for what her eyes saw, and she sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17And the sons of Babylonia came to her for lovemaking and defiled her with their whoring. And she was defiled by them and disgusted by them. 18And she laid bare her whoring and laid bare her nakedness, and I was disgusted by her as I was disgusted by her sister. 19And she played the whore still more to recall the days of her youth when she played the whore in the land of Egypt. 20And she was hot for their consorts, whose flesh was the flesh of donkeys and whose members were like the members of stallions. 21And you went back to the lewdness of your youth when your teats were fondled by the Egyptians, your youthful breasts squeezed. 22Therefore, Oholibah, thus said the Master, the LORD: I am about to rouse your lovers against you, by whom you were disgusted, and I will bring them against you all around. 23The Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, all the Assyrians, those lovely young men, satraps and governors all of them, captains and marshaled fighters, riders of horses all of them. 24And they shall come against you, charger and chariot and wheel in an assembly of troops, buckler and shield and helmet. They shall set about against you all around, and I will set judgment before them, and they shall punish you with their judgments. 25And I will set My jealousy against you, and they shall deal with you in wrath. Your nose and your ears they shall lop off, and those left after you shall fall by the sword. They shall take your sons and your daughters, and those left after you shall be consumed by fire. 26And I will strip off your garments, and they shall take your splendid apparel. 27And I will end your lewdness and your whoring from the land of Egypt, and you shall not lift up your eyes to them, and Egypt shall you no more recall. 28For thus said the Master, the LORD, I am about to give you into the hand of those you hate, into the hand of those by whom you were disgusted. 29And they shall deal with you in hatred and take all your gain and abandon you stark naked, and your whoring nakedness and your lewdness and your whoring shall be laid bare—30the doing of these to you in your whoring after the nations, for your being defiled by their foul things. 31In the way of your sister you went, and I have given her cup in your hand.”
32Thus said the Master, the LORD:
Your sister’s cup you shall drink,
deep and wide.
It shall be a laughingstock and scorn.
Much does it hold.
33With drunkenness and sorrow you are filled,
the cup of devastation and desolation,
your sister’s cup, Samaria.
34And you shall drink it to the dregs,
and its shards you shall grind,
and your breasts you shall cut off.
For I have spoken, said the Master, the LORD.
35Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: “Inasmuch as you forgot Me and flung Me behind your back, even you shall bear your lewdness and your whoring.” 36And the LORD said to me, “Man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah and tell them their abominations? 37For they committed adultery and there is blood on their hands, and they committed adultery with their foul things, and also their sons whom they bore for Me they gave over to be consumed. 38This besides they did to Me: they defiled My sanctuary on that day and My sabbaths they profaned. 39And they slaughtered their children to their foul things and came into My sanctuary on that day to profane it and, look, so did they do within My house. 40And even more, they sent for men coming from afar, to whom a messenger was sent, and, look, they came to you who bathed, put kohl around your eyes, and decked your self with jewels. 41And you sat on a sumptuous bed with a table set before it, and you put My incense and My oil on it. 42And the sound of a singing throng was in it, and to many men [you sent]. Drink was brought from the desert, and they put bracelets on their arms and splendid diadems on their heads. 43And I said to her worn out from adultery: now let them whore in her whoring. And she—. 44And they came to bed with her as one comes to bed with a whore-woman, so did they come to bed with Oholah and Oholibah, the lewd women. 45And righteous men, they shall judge them by the law of adulteresses and by the law of those who shed blood, for they are adulterers and there is blood on their hands. 46For thus said the Master, the LORD: Bring up against them a crowd and make them a horror and an object of scorn. 47And let the crowd stone them and cut them apart with their swords. Their sons and their daughters let them slay, and let them burn their houses in fire. 48And I will put an end to lewdness in the land, and all the women shall learn a lesson and not do like your lewdness. 49And they shall put your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the offenses of your foul things. And you shall know that I am the Master, the LORD.”
CHAPTER 23 NOTES
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3. Their breasts were squeezed and there were their virgin teats fondled. As in chapter 16, Ezekiel takes the conventional metaphor of whoring as an image of idolatry (and also of alliances with foreign powers) and pushes it to a level of sexual explicitness as does no other biblical writer. Nowhere else in the Bible does one find this sort of direct reference to fondling breasts in sexual play, and nowhere else does one encounter an evocation of a concupiscent woman allured by the largeness of the male sexual organ (verse 20). There are passages in this prophecy where the allegorical referent of idolatry virtually disappears as the sexual foreground is flaunted. Ezekiel looks distinctly like a man morbidly obsessed with the female body and with female sexuality, exhibiting a horrified fascination with both. The word in the second verset of this line, dad, is represented by some as “nipple,” but on dubious grounds. It is a phonetic cousin of shad, the standard word for “breast.” It occurs only here and in Proverbs 5:19, where it does not seem to mean “nipple” either. In any case, “fondling” (the more general sense of the verb is “knead”) does not work well for nipples, although it is appropriate for breasts.
4. Oholah . . . Oholibah. No entirely convincing explanation for the choice of these names to designate, respectively, Samaria and Judah, has emerged. Both names have a component that suggests “tent,” ʾohel, and names close to these appear elsewhere in the Bible.
5. while she was Mine. Literally, “beneath Me,” that is, under My authority—a phrase used for adulterous wives. Ezekiel invokes the familiar trope that Israel is wedded to God.
7. all their foul things. In this polemic designation of idols, the referent of the metaphor briefly breaks through the sexual foreground of the figure.
8. her whoring from Egypt she did not abandon. Ezekiel persists in his notion that the Israelites first became idolators in Egypt, and, having become accustomed to the practice, never let go of it.
spilled their whoring upon her. In her case, “whoring” indicates her promiscuous readiness to give herself to all comers. In the case of the lovers, because the noun is the subject of the verb “spill,” there is a clear suggestion that it means “semen.”
10. They laid bare her nakedness. Usually, this idiom is used for incest. Here, it has a literal sense (they stripped her naked as an object of sexual exploitation) and a figurative one (she was utterly without defenses). What is represented by the figure is the destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria.
12. lovely young men all of them. The warriors are good-looking, muscular young men, inciting the desire of Oholibah. They will, of course, destroy her.
14. she saw men etched on the wall. The peoples of Mesopotamia had a sophisticated art of bas-relief, sometimes outlining the figures in vermillion, as here. Oholibah is at once drawn to the visual art, to the heroic male figures it depicts, and to the pagan culture it embodies.
20. their consorts. Pilagshim, a loanword that elsewhere refers to concubines, here must refer to male lovers, an application encouraged by the fact that the plural ending of the word looks like a masculine plural.
the members. The noun zirmah, which occurs only here, is derived from a verbal stem that means “to flow.” It seems formally analogous to shufkhah, a term for the penis derived from a verb that means “to pour.” In both cases, the use to indicate the male member would be through metonymy. It is possible, however, that zirmah has the sense of the noun (not the verb) “ejaculate.” It is also possible that “flesh” in this verse is a euphemism for “penis.”
22. your lovers . . . by whom you were disgusted. It now emerges that the promiscuous Oholibah, having given herself to all these lovers, has discovered that they, or at least some of them, are distasteful.
23. Pekod and Shoa and Koa. These are obviously Babylonian ethnic groups, though precise identification, at least for the last two, is uncertain.
25. Your nose and your ears they shall lop off. Such mutilation was actually sometimes practiced against conquered populations, but in the sexual metaphor, the once alluring Oholibah will be hideously disfigured.
28. those you hate . . . those by whom you were disgusted. The evident idea is that these were foreign lovers with whom she had dalliances and then after the fact was revolted by them.
31. her cup. The cup or chalice of destruction or poison is such a stock image for the prophets that Ezekiel merely has to mention “cup” and the whole idea is evoked. Samaria was destroyed, and now it is the turn of Judah.
32. It shall be a laughingstock. An emendation of the suffix of the verb here would yield “you shall be.”
33. devastation and desolation. The Hebrew wordplay is shamah ushemamah.
34. your breasts you shall cut off. This ghastly self-mutilation follows the lopping off of ears and more above and provides a violent denouement to the breasts fondled by Egyptian lovers.
38. they defiled My sanctuary on that day. Ezekiel seems to have in mind a particular event in which a pagan cult was brought into the Jerusalem temple. A certain day in the reign of Manasseh might be a candidate for the reference.
40. they came to you who bathed, put kohl around your eyes, and decked your self with jewels. While Ezekiel may have in mind Judah’s seeking foreign alliances, the sexual metaphor once more occupies the foreground: like the seductress in Proverbs 7, Jerusalem prepares the bed where she will receive her lovers with rich fabrics, and lays out a feast for their enjoyment. All of this points to burning incense and offering sacrifices to strange gods in the Temple.
42. a singing throng. This translation emends the Masoretic shalew, “tranquil,” to shirim, “songs.”
bracelets on their arms. The suffix for “their” is feminine and hence refers to the women waiting for the foreigners. The Hebrew also veers from the second person to third person, as happens frequently in biblical usage.
43. her worn out from adultery. Through all her promiscuity, she has become a worn-out, faded thing, no longer alluring to men.
And she— This (a single Hebrew word) dangles at the end of the sentence, and it looks as if something has been lost in the text.
47. let the crowd stone them and cut them apart with their swords. Although this is a prophecy of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, what remains in the foreground at the end is the image of the insatiable adulteress, stoned to death and hacked to pieces.